at the creature rally ciaociao was taken down by a rental van. more about that later. let me get you up to speed before that story.
last update was after i destroyed my fan (again) at moped monday, which actually lead to a pretty good soft seize. the piston was smeared over the rings!
i was able to pick the dike ring out of the top grove with no issues, the ring was perfectly fine.
the second ring, however, was a bit more buried. after probably fortyfive minutes of picking at the thing, the ring was finally starting to wiggle and come out.. in my excitement i broke the damn thing. bummer.
with the rings out, i was able to clean up the piston with some 400 grit sandpaper and clean up the ring grooves as good as new.
problem was, i was down one ring.. and no pinasco kits in the country.
so i went through all the polini kits i had at the shop and find one with a ring of the same width and height! only it was a bit bigger around. after probably 40 more minutes of filing with a tiny pencil file, checking every now and again with the cylinder and feeler gauges, i was able to whittle the ring down to proper size, and even hand filed some notches in it to clear the stop peg!
the cylinder cleaned up with hardly any work and i was ready to go.
i really wish i had taken pictures of all of that, but i had left my camera at home some how, and didn’t want to wait.. it’s too bad, i was actually quite proud of myself for finding a close enough ring and hand filing it to fit. it’s been running perfect with that ring ever since!
as mentioned before, that moped monday ride destroyed my plastic tfr fan.
lucky for me, i had an extra one found on moped army, so i went back to mikemike’s to once again lathe out the back of the fan and figure out a better way to attach it.
what i came up with is so simple, i hate myself for not going this rout to begin with.
pop rivets!
i used a lot of them to make sure they had enough grab to keep from tearing out of that plastic. i used 1/8″ alum rivets to clear the coils underneath, so the heads were pretty small. so far it’s holding strong, and i’ve got a lot of miles on it!
i forgot to re-time the motor before throwing it back together. i didn’t think it would have untimed it’s self, but i was going to do it anyway. too bad i didn’t, it was running like ass the night before leaving to sf and i didn’t have time to mess with it. first thing i did when i got to cali was pull the motor and time it. ran awesome once it was back together!
so ciaociao did most of day one without a hitch, it was blasting pretty freaking hard for never being open more than 1/2 throttle.
then came the night city ride. i probably got about 6 miles before the inside nut on my clutch decided to spin off, taking most of the threads with it.
i didn’t notice until i felt a loss of power. i looked behind me to make sure i wouldn’t be cutting anyone off as i merged to the right, and that’s when i noticed all the smoke..
when i looked at the clutch, it was BILLOWING a TON of smoke out of the bell! way more than at blood drive when this exact thing happened! it was also shooting a ton of sparks, what with the inner pulley cheek now resting against the frame..
so i pulled over and waited for the rescue truck.
the next day, i went to rufu’s work shop and he welded the fucker up!
i won’t be getting that yellow malossi spring back, but it won’t be falling apart on me anymore, either!
so now that i have that all taken care of, ciaociao was ready for the long, awesome sunday ride.
other than a few little hiccups (clutch bell nut nearly fell off, belt stretching making it hard to start), the bike was running awesome.
i flew across the golden gate bridge at half throttle (wanted to open up all the way, but decided i would wait for the trip home, didn’t want to blow up before the awesome ride!), was ripping up every hill, passing bikes left and right.. so much fun!
until i went into a semi-steep, super sharp right hand blind corner, hit a patch of pine needles/dirt/something and had the bike slide out from under me, into the oncoming lane and under a van.
CRUNCH!, the bike stopped running..
i rushed over, dragged it out of the street and up the inside wall as best as i could and waited for all the other mopeds to go by. once they had, i dragged it to the next driveway a little way up the street and waited for the pick up truck again. fuck.
the frame is toast.
it could have been a lot worse, i could have been ran over with the bike, but some how i lucked out.
poor ciaociao did not! sad.
the pipe now has a few dents in it, i snapped the 3rd mounting point off the malossi case and broke another float bowl, but other than that everything seems fine.. there is some oil on my tranny, but that might be from the over-flow hole from when it was on it’s side. i need to tear into it and inspect it better.
so the ciao’s off the road again. lamecity. i’ve been trying super hard to not cut up green ciao to make ciaociao v2.0, but it’s sooo tempting.. currently i’m searching for a new frame so that i don’t have to destroy a beautiful stock ciao to satisfy my burn-out-wheelie cravings!
ciaociao will be back, and soon. so keep watching this space!
the stock clutch springs made all the difference! i was easy on the throttle and the thing was still ripping tonight! i have the jetting pretty close at 96 main and 50 idle, my 7 needle is one down from the top (three up). i think i might go with a 97 or 98 main, though.. it’s not lean, but it could be a little more rich for a new kit.
ps, this moped vibrates the shit out of my ass!
however, with all that good news comes the bad news. i fouled out at a light and while checking the plug i noticed the motor was pretty hot.. i turn the crank over with the variator and noticed the fan didn’t turn with it. FAN BROKE AGAIN! GAH!
i haven’t had a chance to pull it a part to see what’s going on, but hey, my new spacer kept the fan from taking out my coils! yay!
while i have it apart i think i’ll pull the top end apart and just give it a look. it didn’t seize on me, but i want to make sure it didn’t take any heat damage or anything.
if i get extra brave, maybe i’ll start on a little porting on it.. but i dunno, i think i should hold off till after the rally.
SO MUCH FUN TO RIDE!
i am pretty convinced that the springs i have in ciaociao’s clutch were meant for a 1 speed. they were shorter than the stock springs, and a utter bitch to get on. back at blooddrive, the clutch wouldn’t engage proper, and would smoke and glaze over the pads way easy and i’m having the same problem now. i think the springs are over stretched and not letting the clutch fully engage!
that’s fine, i’ve decided to throw the stock springs back in for now and deal with it after the rally.
oh, except what? one of my stock springs seems to be missing? noooooo!
yeah, i need to locate a 3rd stock variated clutch spring, and as soon as possible. gah!
i have a couple friends in town who might be able to help me out.
other than that, carb tuning is going ok, i think! i’m slowly figuring this out! even though the bike won’t go very well thanks to the clutch!
this bike is going to make the creature rally, i swear!
so, if you’ll remember from last time, i mentioned my clutch smoking a bunch and my fan falling apart again.
well, the clutch thing ended up being the nut on the very back spinning loose. i sheered the lock washer that was to hold it in place and it spun off. once that happened, everything was all loosey goosey and caused all the smoke and heat. it’s all better now, new lock washer installed with a dab or two of red loctite, and i should be good to go back there. i hope..
however, the fan falling off ended up being a real problem. it took out my cdi!
the fan fell into the coils and melted away at them till i broke some wires. melted the back of the fan a bit, too.
not a big deal. besides, when you’re trying something new for the first time, you’re bound to run into problems like this. i picked up some new coils pretty cheap on ebay and am working on a new adapter/spacer plate for the fan. it will be stepped as such so that the fan cannot fall backwards into the coils again, and it will provide me with more surface area for gluing it together.
i really hope to have the fan thing sorted out this weekend some time. it’s all most rally time again and i haven’t gotten to even begin the actual tuning part of this moped. 
oh! and here’s a photo to show you how much cutting i had to do to the frame to get the carb to work. i also had to take a razor blade to the plastic float bowl! it’s a tight fit!
Filed under: carb, cdi, clutch, electronics, fail!, intake, motor, performance, variator, video
so early last week we had a 90+ deg. day here in seattle, which means it probably got up to 3000+ deg. in my bed room. my computer melted down.
i haven’t had a chance to assess the damage, i’m hoping it was only the video card.
this has made it difficult for me to keep you guys up to date. sorry!
ciaociao’s first start! sorry so dark, austin took that at 3am last thursday, the first day of the rally.
it made the first day! i was stoked.
however, i was plagued with problems. haha
about half way through the ride the clutch bell was billowing smoke. i have yet to tear into it to figure out why. my guess is that one of those malossi springs broke and i was dragging a pad the whole time.
also, i noticed the fan was ungluing itself from the spacer mikemike and i made for it.
the fan was just kind of pressed onto the spacer, and then glued.
the concept was perfect, just the execution was a little off. it fit perfectly.
and it worked great! but the glue was failing, so it’s time for something new. i think we will build another spacer like this one, but give it teeth around the out side, heat it up and press it into the fan. THEN i’ll go over it with some epoxy.
the plastic fan with the tiny rotor reaaaally made this thing rip.
you can kind of tell in the video above that the throttle response is amazing. with no weight on the crank, it would speed up and slow down super fast.. and the whole thing was super simple! well, again, the concept was simple, actually making it happen took some work.
first we made the stator plate and got the coil and everything bolted up. we used a timing light to time it.
then the fan/spacer combo slides down the shaft and rests on the rotor.
then the fan shroud gets bolted on and it’s ready to be put in the frame.
once in the frame, the variator is installed and the big nut smashes everything together.
also, as you can see, the carb fit right in there! it took some manipulation of the frame, and a razor blade to shave down a plastic phbg bowl in just the right spots, but it fits perfect.
so anyway, riding it. i had it jetted waaay too rich. anything past quarter throttle sounded like i was riding under water, it was four stroking so bad.
but it was fast.
man, when i found the sweet spot at 1/4 throttle, the fork would unload and off it went.. it was a little scary. i can’t wait to see what full throttle is like.. oh man.
after the smoky clutch and fan coming apart on me, i decided to put it away for the rest of the rally and to ride a less intense bike.
creature rally is in a month and a half. i was hoping to have this thing painted and finished by then, but i have some serious tuning to do before then, so we’ll see.
i need to jet it proper, need to drill out or find new weights for the variator (it was variating before the clutch would grab, yet would ride wheelies on command), make sure this clutch doesn’t blow up on me and get the fan issue tamed.
and hopefully get the fork finished and loose the heavy bravo forks.
and get the frame braced and welded up.
yay, mopeds are fun again!
installing malossi clutch springs on a vespa is a total bitch. i am hating life right now.
once i get them in, though, all i have to do is tighten everything down and install the decompress cable and i’m ready to try and start it! omg!
also, fuck a vespa clutch.
more (with pictures) later.
Filed under: clutch
i hate hate hate vespa moped drum clutches. sure, they are tunable (if you can find the springs), but they are junk. i break the bells all the time, and twice now i’ve had the nut holding the bell on randomly spin itself off. even if i torque that thing down, it eventually works it’s way off.
last night i was on orange ciao and the clutch bell fell off while i was riding it, the clutch shoes all shot straight out, breaking all of the springs and my tranny cover. i got hit by a chunk of something, but it didn’t do any damage.
i think the vespa’s clutch is the weakest point of the whole bike. i’m going to work on adapting something else to work for me. i was looking at a peugeot fox clutch on ebay.it the other day, and i’ve been looking at racing kart clutches more recently. there’s got to be something out there i can make work that won’t suck as much balls as the stock clutch..
